Sharon woman gets jail time for sex with teen boys

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ELKHORN—There was “nothing good” that was going to come out of the night Rachael McCormick spent partying and drinking with high school students in her Sharon apartment last year, Judge Phillip Koss said.

McCormick, then 37, had sex with two underage boys in what Koss called a “sordid” night that would see her arrested and charged with six sex offenses.

McCormick in August pleaded guilty to four charges and Friday morning was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation.

The sentence means McCormick can avoid time in a state prison, though Koss gave her a stern warning.

“If that probation is revoked, Ms. McCormick, you will come to me,” Koss said.

Prosecutors did not specifically request time in prison for McCormick, although Assistant District Attorney T.C. Makaya sought to paint a picture of McCormick as an authority figure shirking her responsibility and taking advantage of the boys.

Dressed in a grey jail jumpsuit over a pink shirt, McCormick shook her head as Makaya recounted how she got drunk on raspberry vodka with the teens and had sex with two boys, 15 and 14, the night of Sept. 29, 2012.

Makaya also asked Koss to consider how the case would be viewed if genders were reversed—if a 37-year-old man had sex with two teenage girls.

“There is no practical difference,” Makaya said.

Koss acknowledged that the severity of the crime is just as great, no matter who committed it. But he pointed out prosecutors were the ones who reached an agreement in which McCormick pleaded guilty to lesser charges of exposing a child to harmful material and fourth-degree sexual assault, with charges of second-degree sexual assault dismissed but read into the record.

He had to sentence to the charges she was convicted on, Koss said, which were misdemeanors and low-level felonies.

McCormick's attorney, Joshua Klaff, argued she should be sentenced to probation, citing her almost nonexistent criminal record and the nearly nine months she already has spent in the Walworth County jail.

No one involved in the case—from prosecutors to one of the victims to the Department of Corrections official who examined her for a presentence investigation—requested she go to prison, Klaff said.